If WordPress 2.7 Was A Movie…

November 7, 2008

Jen Mylo

This would be our trailer. Check out some of the upcoming new features and design changes in this sneak preview video, including how to customize your dashboard, the new comment reply feature, the new navigation system, and the customizable posting screen. When you’re finished watching, take the poll below the video to tell us which feature you’re looking forward to the most.

A note on timing: WordPress 2.7 was originally scheduled to be released on WordPress.org for download on November 10th. WordPress.com would have had it installed as soon as possible thereafter. However, the launch date has been delayed due to some additional complexity and our determination to test all the new features with current users before releasing the updated software. 2.7 is expected to be released on WordPress.org by the end of November. We may be able to bring 2.7 to WordPress.com blogs slightly before the official launch date, but for now, no dates have been finalized. When we have a fixed date, we will announce it on this blog, so you all will have plenty of notice of the upcoming change.

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It all looks great. The only problem is that your trailer has to have fast paced music and a deeper, more dramatic voice for your narrator. After all 9 out of 10 entertainment executives agree, uptempo music and deep voices mean a bigger box office gross. =P

The new UI is brilliant. My favourite feature is probably “reply to comment”, but I have to say the drag and drop format as well as the UI in general are quite innovative. I’d have liked the “post” page to actually be separate so the “post from dashboard” isn’t a welcome feature for me. This is because I like to take time to create my posts… and prefer if I have the writing area is as large a percentage of the screen as possible.

Anyhow thanks for putting in all the hard work so us users can enjoy this! Shalom!

Don’t worry! The separate screen to add a new post is still there and better than ever, with a drag and drop layout that allows you to create the perfect writing environment. The QuickPress module on the Dashboard is not replacing the traditional screen, merely supplementing it.

Actually, I used “was” very much on purpose. See lengthy description in response to haounomiko’s 7:38pm comment above, or check out http://www.bartleby.com/64/C001/061.html for a more in-depth explanation of why this usage is okay.

Okay, I know people are going to jump down my throat for saying this, but I believe that a professional site should mind its grammar because that’s the professional thing to do. Those who don’t like the idea of correct grammar are free to be as sloppy as they want; they’ll just look unprofessional to me. With that said… the correct usage is “if WordPress were a movie”.

Actually, I do care about grammar quite a bit. There are two arguments for my use of the indicative rather than the subjunctive in the post title. 1) If my “if” clause is not presupposed to be false, then even with “would” in the main clause, the use of “was” could be correct. Though at first glance it might *seem* to be false, because WordPress 2.7 is, of course, an application, not a movie, there is grammatically-correct logic behind this usage that will make more sense when we get a little closer to launch and we bring out…. come on, don’t make me ruin the surprise. 2) Language is a fluid and ever-changing vehicle of expression, including if-was clauses which is now considered common usage and used by many respected writers, even when their usage doesn’t fit within the traditional allowance of presupposition of “if clause” falsehood.

And don’t worry, we won’t jump down your throat. We debated 70’s vs. ’70s for almost an hour at the Automattic company meeting last month (I advocated for ’70s). 🙂

Hi, I was reading, that the release date of WordPress 2.7 was 10-th November, then I found on your blog, that it will be released late November. Please, what´s release date of this on wordpress.com, which will be for wordpress.com users, not wordpress.org. Thanks

We’ll probably launch on wordpress.com a bit earlier than the final release on wordpress.org, sometime later this month. No exact date yet, we want to make sure it’s working well in IE before we make the upgrade.

There won’t be an option to change to the 2.5-based layout, no. However, I can say that of the beta testers who initially expressed the same opinion you just did, almost all the ones I’ve talked to have been completely won over by the new layout because of how fast and easy it makes managing their blogs. So maybe when you’ve had a chance to use it you’ll feel differently. (Twitter search for WordPress 2.7 and you’ll see what I mean.)

Wow, the “At a glance” statistics (with each of the numbers in a fixed place) is so much better than the current format (like “You have 273 posts, 2 pages, 3 drafts, contained within 10 categories and 367 tags. You have 316 total comments, 316 approved, 0 spam and 0 awaiting moderation”) we have, a sentence that needs to be scanned/read each time.

Although the clip was a little too fast for me to absorb, hopefully ALL of these features will minimize my “darn, how did I do that last time?” Sort of like finding my keys…I know I put them there a minute ago, but my short-term memory punishes me if they aren’t staring me in the face! Thanks!

Part of the reason for the hype is so that wordpress.com users will be aware of the changes that are coming, since they are so dramatic. When we launched 2.5, many users felt it was a surprise/shock, and expressed a desire that we try to give them more warning next time. Consider this our “save the date” card. Except, you know, with the date a little bit fuzzy. 🙂

I would like to add that using the polling feature instead of having vast amount of one line posts is a great decision. I also think forcing us to pick one top feature requires us to think a bit more about our response and that is a good thing.

gosh!
can’t choose best – like them all and i didn’t get to watch yr presentation as it was taking forever to upload
although i’m ADSL – i had to turn off my router as the video was like listening to a cell phone with bad re c. pt n
love the yellow at last some colour!

The original launch date was going to be November 10th, but we’ve pushed it back a couple of weeks to conduct additional testing, squash some bugs, and try to make it work well in some less-than-standards-compliant browsers that shall remain nameless. We’re currently in beta 2 testing over on WordPress.org, and will hopefully be able to launch the new version on WordPress.com a little bit earlier than the official .org release. Sometime later in November; we’ll let you know as we get closer what the exact date will be.

Many themes are being updated to support threaded comments and comment paging, but there aren’t any new themes being bundled as part of 2.7, since theme development is separate from development of the administration panel.